Orientation of churches

The orientation of a building refers to the direction in which it is constructed and laid out, taking account of its planned purpose and ease of use for its occupants, its relation to the path of the sun and other aspects of its environment.

[1] Within Christian church architecture, orientation is an arrangement by which the point of main interest in the interior is towards the east (Latin: oriens).

[7] Origen says: "The fact that ... of all the quarters of the heavens, the east is the only direction we turn to when we pour out prayer, the reasons for this, I think, are not easily discovered by anyone.

[9][10][11] At first, the orientation of the building in which Christians met was unimportant, but after the legalization of the religion in the fourth century, customs developed in this regard.

Later, in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires they made no attempt to observe orientation, as is seen in San Francisco de Asis Mission Church near Taos, New Mexico.

[24] Similarly, a survey of a total of 32 medieval churches with reliable metadata in Lower Austria and northern Germany discovered only a few aligned in accordance with the saint's feast, with no general trend.

[20] A notable example of an (approximately) oriented church building that – to match the contours of its location and to avoid an area that was swampy at the time of its construction – bends slightly in the middle is Quimper Cathedral in Brittany.

The porch over the main entrance extends over the old wall and, while not connected to the original building does make a nod towards continuity of the structure.